4:17pm: I'm already sick of the frogtalk. I know Ottawa is in the match and some people in that city speak that horrible backwards language, but the rest of the country doesn't appreciate it. Hey, do you think maybe ditching it might help save the ratings? Worth a try.

4:18pm: The Ottawa REDBLACKS are playing their promo video.

4:21pm: The Edmonton WhiteRaceIsSuperiors are playing their video now. Great shots of all the defensive touchdowns we've scored. Oh yeah, I guess there's an offense too.

4:25pm: An asian and two blondes walk into the bar. Is this a joke? No, it's the company I have coming over in 5 minutes, which means this cowboy has to clean up and stop liveblogging. Enjoy the game! Edmonton Eskimos/WhiteRaceIsSuperior 36, REDBLACKS 17 is my prediction!

5:15pm: The girls have gone, I finished the leftover pizza, and the Edmonton Eskimos are the 103rd Grey Cup champions (or, if you prefer, the "2015 Grey Cup Champions"). The Evil Eskimo Empire has come out on top again, all is right with the world. Still, since I didn't get to update this last night (and dear Lord do I still have a cleanup on my hands) I figured I'm finish this "liveblog" off with a few game notes.

Hey, what the hell happened to the famed Eskimo defense? Yes I know the REDBLACKS are a high flying team, Burris is an experienced QB yadda yadda yadda. But the first five minutes of each half was just nothing but the Esks looking like spectators as the REDBLACKS stormed across the field. Sure in the second half you can credit the blatent pass interference that Aaron Grymes committed as the big screwup that gave Ottawa three points and the lead, but in general the defense took way too long to find their footing. It reminded me a lot of the Saskatchewan game in October[the score resembles the October 17th game against BC. -ed] that saw the Roughriders take a 14-3 lead after the first quarter that they stretched into a 21-3 lead after the first play of the second. Only in that game the Esks turned on the offensive coals and decimated the Wheatherders. In this one...well, they kept on stumbling.

Defense wins championships and the Eskimos defense to their credit finally did get their bearing. The offense didn't to nearly the extent, and awarding Mike Reilly the Grey Cup MVP seemed like a bit of a cheat. You can't point to anything he did particularly wrong and 26 points probably isn't much to sneer at, but it certainly felt like the Eskimos offense turned down several chances to put this game away. Sure you can bring up Shawn Whyte's brutal performance in those field goals (notice that the Eskimos twice tried for two point conversions following his post-hitting), and...well, let's just bring that up. Where the hell did that come from? The guy who had a 93% field goal completion rate looked like the second coming of Richie Leone, for Pete's sake. Grant Shaw's punting looked just fine, though nothing spectacular, and he was never tested with the need for on-side kicks or anything particularly skillful. Oddly enough, Chris Milo's punts (twice referred to as "line drives") looked far better than anything Shaw put together but Shaw's longest (69 yards) was only 3 short of Milo's longest, and Shaw actually had the longer average. Take that TSN play-by-play announcers who kept calling Milo's punts "line drives"! Still, though, those fuckers sailed across the field, and Edmonton never had good field possession to start off a drive. Oddly enough, each team only had a single 2 & out the entire Grey Cup, despite them leading the league in forced 2 & outs per game (Edmonton 6.9, Ottawa 6.1). On the other hand, Burris did throw an interception, and twice the Eskimos got an initial first down only to stall out on the next 10 yards.

Kendial Lawrence should probably take a pretty big amount of blame for the poor result as well. He averaged only 7 yards per punt return in the Grey Cup and had a fumble that Ottawa turned into their second touchdown. on the season his average kick return is down 30% from last year (he has more yards but on far more carries), and while his punt kick return numbers are trending upwards it's a little worrying. He was second in the league in combined returning yards though, so there isn't really much of an upgrade available for the position. The Eskimos will just have to work next year on giving him more room to storm up the field. Still, coming back from punts was brutal in the Grey Cup and fortunately the defense held Ottawa down at the ends of each half, or it could have gotten ugly.

I thought the penalty calls were fairly even in the game, I know it's a favourite pasttime of sports fans to blame the officals (though, in Edmonton's case, it does come with a pretty decent justification, frankly), but generally the calls were pretty reasonable. The first pass interference call on the final Eskimo TD was probably the most ridiculous call of the game, and I personally think that pass interference needs to be toned down a little bit. On the other hand, the CFL wants to maintain scoring. Regardless, it's a little silly that a pass recipient can look at an approaching ball, look at an approaching defender, and make the rational judgement that it's better to get into the path of the man than the pigskin. The second pass interference call on that drive was similarly pretty weak, but had a little more legitimacy as he did tie up the receiver's hands. I think the CFL should be allowing a little "interference" like that, though. Awesome when the call works for you (as it did for the Eskimos) but in general a little flakey. The Grymes interference call was bang on though. Oddly enough, you can't haul a receiver down to his shoulders two full seconds before the ball even hits the dirt. Funny league, I suppose.

As for that second REDBLACKS pass interference call, there's a lot of talk about the possibility of the Saskatchewan SisterKissers taking Eskimos coach Chris Jones for themselves, in a dual role of coach and GM. Now in general you can't fault Chris Jones for what he's done with the team: he's changed the culture from the Machochia/Tillman nightmare, he's been creative with the offensive plays (how many fake punts and fake kicks and fake throws have the Eskimos done this season?), and he's been in charge of a defense so stifling that it's now law in Canada that you refer to the Edmonton Eskimos as having a "stifling defense". But during that pivotal play yesterday when Chris Jones was going to let the possibly-game-changing call go by without using his coaches' challenge, I was screaming at the TV in the hope that the Flatlanders take him away from us. The three minute warning was coming up, and as soon as that happens all coaches challenges are gone forever. This was the perfect chance for a challenge too: it's a punt the ball away if you fail, it's first and goal on the ten yard line if you succeed. More importantly, this was Edmonton's first coach's challenge (Ottawa had the questioned one earlier, unsuccessfully) and therefore there was no penalty for failing: Edmonton wouldn't have lost its timeout. Instead, the Eskimo players themselves took it upon themselves to do the coach's job for him. Kenny Stafford, for one, refused to get into position and spent so long arguing at the bench that he forced Jones to burn out that same timeout he was in no danger of losing to begin with! Fortunately, in that time Eskimos off field team was able to look at the footage and let Jones know that he had a case. As the time-out wound down, you could see him reluctantly throw up his challenge flag with an absolute look of disdain on his face. Yes, Stafford and some of the other players basically refused to accept his authority, but ultimately with good reason. Had they meekly let Jones accept the call on the field, the Ottawa REDBLACKS would be the Grey Cup champions today.

I mentioned at the beginning of this liveblog (back when it was, indeed, a live blog) that the opening act, some nice Canadiana from {insert generic young male country performer name here}, was pretty good. It had a decent mood to keep the crowd moving. The halftime performance from Fall Out Boy on the other hand was complete garbage. First, Pete Wentz looks big enough to have played on the Eskimos O-line. Whatever happened to this guy? Secondly, they weren't putting a whole lot of energy and effort into the performance. You could blame the weather I suppose, but that seems to be a cop-out. They came on, played three (or was it four) generic songs that were so identical that at least at home it couldn't even be understood which song was playing. They only played one of their hits, and that was right in the middle. At first the (natural) blonde that was over watching the game didn't even think it was them, she assumed it was some warmup act. But Fall Out Boy was the warmup act, and they didn't even warm up. An energy-free performance, generic songs, I ended up switching channels to something the girls and I could actually enjoy. (the fireplace channel, hubba hubba)

Another thing I kept muting the TV for and changing channels over was that goddamned Frogtalk. Do you want to know how to make the CFL more relevent and hip for a younger crowd? stop pretending that Canada is half French. French is a little wart in the corner, they'd be better off in Punjab or whatever those gutter trash posing as Syrian refugees speak.

Finally, there's a lot of talk about the state of the league, Twitter conversations, etc. But if you want a good sign of how much more distance the CFL has to come, it's almost 24 hours after the game was finished and a YouTube search for "Grey Cup" videos posted today yields 113 videos and only one over 500 views (and it's just Fall Out Boy's performance and still under 2,000). By contrast, "Patriots" (for the NFL game yesterday) yields 820 results with the top three combining for 486,003 views. That's definitely not a good sign.

It's the biggest day in the Canadian sports calendar†, Grey Cup Sunday.

At 6pm Eastern, 3pm Pacific, and 4pm local time, the Edmonton Eskimos will take on the Ottawa REDBLACKS for the second oldest sports trophy in North America. This is the 103rd Grey Cup which was first awarded in 1909 and I know the math doesn't work out and you need to blame the First World War and a bizarre dispute over regulations (and not a combination of the Spanish Flu and the Second World War that usually accounts for non-Bettman related canceled sporting events).

This is a minor story every year, but in the wake of the disgusting TRC report (that I debunked head to toe here) there's yet another media push to consider the name "Eskimos" offensive to...people...who...aren't...Eskimos.

Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit organization, says the term is derogatory and symbolizes colonial policies. He said the team needs to change its name.

"If I was called an Eskimo or introduced as an Eskimo by anyone else, I would be offended by that," he said.

To this, there's only one thing that any right-minded Canadian (or Edmonton Eskimos fan) should say. Hey Natan Obed, shut up you stupid Eskimo.

If you're not in Canada you probably haven't even heard that "Eskimo" is "offensive". The gag is that most of the Red Indians who live up north call themselves "Inuit". Notice I didn't say "all". If you happen to be from the Yupik (Siberia) or Iñupiat (Alaska) tribes, the Inuit were your rivals. In fact, to borrow a page from Obed's playbook, calling everybody from the north "Inuit" is cultural imperialism. You might as well start calling everybody from the American midwest "Iowans". So already there's a necessary requirement for a term that isn't "Inuit" to describe them. Fortunately, we have one. It's called Eskimo.

But isn't "Eskimo" an offensive term meaning child rapist or something? Well, no. There's a false claim perpetrated by Red Indian activists [isn't there always? -ed] that "Eskimo" meant "eaters of raw meat". The more extreme activists think it's a reference to cannibalism. In reality (that humdrum thing that morons like Natan Obed never operate in), Eskimo is probably the Anglicization of "assime·w" which means "guy who knows how to tie his own snowshoe laces". What an insult! It's also theorized that since this word was used by the Red Indians who interacted with French traders to reference the tribe down the road who (unlike them, I presume) actually knew how to lace snowshoes that the French assumed it was their word for "everybody who lives around here". Regardless, the false claims that Eskimo is an offensive term just don't hold water. The easily outraged will always be offended by something, especially when they want to continue their barbaric culture's 12,000 year tradition of not bothering to create anything themselves.

Remember that these are the people who didn't create anything of real note on the continent. In the 260 years since white explorers discovered Edmonton, they created a modern liberal (and, unfortunately, Liberal) democracy, a thriving metropolis, and an advanced society that features a 9-team football league spanning thousands of miles that will be broadcasting their championship game in high-definition to be transmitted around the world. Obed, to borrow a President Monkey line, didn't build that. Instead, much like Tolkien's orcs, the Inuit take the modern refined gasoline that we use to travel around the world and sniff it until they give themselves irreparable brain damage. On a similar vein, when Natan Obed looks at the Canadian Football League (the second best in the world) all he can think of is "goddamned whitey, how can I destroy this?" Those who oppose the term "Edmonton Eskimos" are basically just envious and bitter about their own lack of accomplishments. Actual Eskimos are going to look more like this than like this, and therefore they have this weird concern that a football team named after them is "culturally appropriating" their so-called good name. Notice, as a small aside, what less culturally insignificant groups think about having sports teams named after them. The Minnesota Vikings, San Diego Padres, and Notre Dame Fighting Irish all have names after groups that probably don't contribute a lot of players to the field. Can you imagine some Swedish guy being upset over the Minnesota Vikings? Or an Irishman being upset over the Fighting Irish? Of course not. If a random Scandinavian visiting the United States saw that there's a team called the "Vikings" (with the logo being an over-the-top caricature of what Vikings supposedly looked like but definitely didn't) do you think he'd whine to the Ottawa Citizen about it? Or would he go into the local team store, buy some merchandise, and decide to cheer on the team that sort of has some sort of loose tie-in with his own cultural heritage? You know full well it's the latter. They're called the Vikings? Hey, I'm sort of a Viking. I mean, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather came from the same patch of land that the Vikings came from even though statistically speaking he didn't join them. Yeah, this is my team! Gå Vikings!. Likewise, an Irishmen hearing about a team called the "Fighting Irish" would probably only oppose the name if they go on a ridiculously long losing streak, and even then he'd probably sarcastically use the name to joke about how the players themselves aren't actually Irish. Yet it's only the Red Indian who sees a team named after them and reacts like a ten year old girl learning that Justin Bieber is taken. It's sort of embarrassing. Learn to have the smallest amount of respect for your racial group to think that your name might just be the sort of thing that other people want to use to describe themselves to make them sound awesome.

But hey, I'm nothing if accommodating. If the Red Indian doesn't want to have a team named after them, I suppose we can oblige. I ever came up with a good one in the post title: we can rename the team the Edmonton WhiteRaceIsSuperior. That way we won't mention your race in the team name anymore, Natan Obed [well, not explicitly at least... -ed]. It won't be even remotely offensive to the race actually mentioned in the title either. It's win win. Will Obed join me in supporting this great new name change?

Okay, the quick answer is the Edmonton Eskimos shouldn't be changing their name. Fads come and go, and the current #IdleNoMore fad in pretending that the Eskimos need to change their name in the spirit of "reconciliation" is just plain ridiculous. It will blow over probably sooner rather than later, especially as more and more Canadians wake up to the fact that society in general, and the Eskimos in particular, didn't do anything wrong that needs to be "reconciled". The Edmonton Eskimos didn't get Davis Inlet kids addicted to gas sniffing. The Edmonton Eskimos didn't convert a fire hall into a youth centre. The Edmonton Eskimos didn't hire their boyfriend to help siphon money out of the Attawapiskat Reservation into their own finances. Those who are responsible are the ones who devote their resources to creating something called the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami in order to attack better men who have built meaningful aspects of our modern civilized society, rather than just get with the program.

† Not counting the NHL Draft Day, the NHL Trade Deadline Day, the NHL Free Agent Signing Day, the four to seven days of the Stanley Cup Finals, and probably most if not all games in the NHL Conference Finals. Also, possibly, Super Bowl Sunday, the NCAA Final Four, and any really big NFL matchups.‡ Martok and I were discussing this last week and we can't entirely figure it out. I personally think bandwagoneering is a major affect: US sports culture is so much more intense than the Canadian version, so Canadian sports fans would rather watch USC's defeat of UCLA yesterday in front of 93,000 fans than BC versus Winnipeg in the Grey Cup. Which is odd, because at least when American sports fans watch college ball a lot of them are watching either their alma mater or a chief rival of their alma mater or a chief rival of a rival of a rival of a rival of their alma mater. "UCLA lost? Awesome! They beat the Arizona Wildcats in September, and I wanted them to beat Arizona to pay them back for their humiliation of myteam, the South Carolina State Bulldogs in 2013. I'm a SC-State Graduate. Go Bulldogs! And whoever beats teams who failed to beat Arizona!. No Canadian can say this phrase, but we know people from BC or Manitoba, or we dislike Hamilton for beating us etc. etc. etc. It truly boggles the mind.

Of course, the people who will be the most affected by this bill — the farmers and ranchers — weren't adequately consulted about the legislation. But you know who was consulted? The Alberta Federation of Labour.

Beyond that? Well, you can write your MLA. Make sure to write an actual physical letter, though (they don't care about emails). To make your letter count, there are three extra things to do. First, cc the NDP Minister of Agriculture Oneil Carlier and the Employment Minister Lori Sigurdson. Secondly, cc a member of the media, Lorne Gunter for example. This is something you can do electronically. (if you have a better/different example, please leave one in the comments). Finally, and this is important, cc the Wildrose Agriculture Critic Rick Strankman. You definitely can again send him an electronic mail message: Rick.Strankman@wildrose.ca. The letter to your MLA, the NDP Ag Minister, and the NDP Employment Minister however definitely must be written.

Bill 6 is a move to invade rural Alberta. The NDP will make every effort to destroy our way of life. They'll lie, they'll cheat, they won't stop until we stop them. Write your MLA, make sure the media and the opposition see you doing it.

The University of British Columbia is a pretty wacky place. It's an extremist far-left campus, in an extremist far-left city. The local MP is anti-Albertan enviro-fascist Joyce Murray, for crying out loud. This woman loves taxes like she's in a porn waiting for a hot sticky shot of taxes to the face -- until her own sacred cows are hurt by it, then she wants bicycles and related accessories to be exempt from the GST.

So in that spirit, it's high time for all white conservatives at the University of British Columbia to stand up and turn the 4chan prank into a real movement. The logo, courtesy of the pathetic pansies at the UBC administration, is provided below.

After a frantic search by friends and family, using cellphone tracking technology, Hubert was found two days later about four miles away, bloodied and face down in a ditch at DeKalb and Arizona avenues. His family insisted Hubert was on a MARTA train that night.

"He got mugged. He left the party and we think he said somebody mugged him. They ripped all his clothes and his wallet and watch and phone
out left him for dead," said Diane Hubert at the time her son was found.

MARTA and Atlanta police confirmed Hubert was not riding MARTA that evening.

A source told CBS46 Hubert, whose nickname is reportedly 007, jumped off a bridge -- like James Bond in the opening scene of Skyfall-- onto a moving train, believed to be a CSX train.

He's an aerospace engineering student and he didn't know that James Bond stunts aren't real?

The David Ortiz farewell party, otherwise known as the entirety of the 2016 Major League Baseball season, is going to be an insufferable display of iconery from all facets of the game. The Boston media - hell, all media - will run out of laudatory superlatives to describe the Red Sox franchise superstar by the time Memorial Day comes around. Major League Baseball will attempt to market the star's final season with the inevitable tributes, T-shirts, collectible coasters, and Fenway Park dirt upon which Ortiz once tread. Twenty-nine other MLB teams will have to come up with more original parting gifts, after exhausting the well for Derek Jeter's retirement lap through the league last season.

The All-Star Game will no doubt be Ortiz-centric. Heck, Fenway Park may even have a sellout or two over the next six months.

Look, there's no argument that Ortiz doesn't deserve the accolades. He is indeed one of the most popular Red Sox to ever play the game, a consummate winner with three rings to his name. But let's stop with the knee-jerk nonsense that has Ortiz preparing to go into the business of multiplying loaves in his post-baseball life.

But because Ortiz played for the powerhouse Red Sox, his legacy has to be so much more. Had he won three rings in Oakland, his farewell tour might amount to a couple book signings and a new Samsung commercial. In self-important Boston, Ortiz will receive enough flowery tributes to make you gag. We're in for seven more months of debating where Ortiz ranks among all-time BoSox, among all-time first basemen, among all-time just ol' regular swell fellas.

Through his 324 minutes of play thus far, Talbot has earned a goals-against-average of 2.22 (the 11th-best mark of all goaltenders who have played in five or more games thus far this season) and a save-percentage of .918 (the 12th-best mark among this group).

The sample size is still small and the season is young, but it’s already clear that Talbot is a notable upgrade over the Oilers’ previous options in the cage. Perhaps most encouraging for the Oilers faithful is the fact that Talbot’s numbers thus far align well with his previous performance in New York. He impressed in place of an injured Henrik Lundqvist last season while posting a goals-against-average of 2.21 and save-percentage of .926.

Talbot has continued to play at that level this season, which should be notable for the Oilers considering those numbers were good for 21 wins in 36 games for the Rangers. Crucial in that victorious run last season, however, was the fact that New York finished the year as the third-highest scoring team in the league – concluding the campaign with a goals-for per game mark of 3.02.

Edmonton Oilers goalie Cam Talbot’s last game in October was anything but a Halloween treat, but it was symbolic of his first month’s work. There is room for improvement with his .897 save percentage and a 2.88 goal average in 10 games.

Talbot wasn’t supposed to be a saviour in net after the Oilers traded three draft picks for him in June. They just wanted a starter who hopefully could be better or more consistent than Ben Scrivens, but Talbot has given up 15 goals in his last 115 shots; a rough patch, for sure.

He gave up two ugly goals against Calgary — the mishandling of the puck that Michael Frolik finished off, and the bad-angle shot by Frolik that found its way into the net. Are these mental mistakes or technical? Mental error on the first, technical faux pas on the second.

Oilers management has now had a whopping three high profile goaltenders come into the team and become disappointments. Victor Fasth was a nightmare, faggot-loving coward Ben Scrivens now can't even handle the AHL, and Cam Talbot turns out to have been a phantom as well.

One hopes that the Oilers have learned their lesson: before considering another team's backup as the best thing since sliced bread, first make sure they aren't playing in front of a dominating defensive lineup. Anybody can look good with Drew Doughty playing in front of him. Put me in that net and I'd probably post an 0.825 SV%.

2015-11-23

With the thrilling (and, speaking as somebody who was in the stands, as scary as shit in the fourth quarter) win against Calgary on Sunday, the Edmonton "EVil Empire" Eskimos are on their way to the Grey Cup.

They'll face off against the Ottawa Redblacks -- wait, my mistake -- the Ottawa REDBLACKS in the 103rd Grey Cup, live from Winnipeg on Sunday November 29th.

The Grey Cup is definitely Edmonton's to lose. They're 14-4 and a year removed from their similarly strong 12-6 season where they lost every game against Calgary including the Western Final. Ottawa was 2-16 last season -- yes, you read that right -- and while their turnaround to being the Eastern leader with a 12-6 record is rather impressive it still won't be enough.

A curious reversal, of sorts: Edmonton was 4-14 in their disasterous 2013 season, and then similarly turned it around to 12-6 last year, and now onto the Grey Cup. Ottawa, playing in the far easier Eastern division, would be outside looking in if they too had to deal with the Stampeders every year rather than the niqab-loving Toronto Argonauts.

Regardless, for all intents and purposes the Grey Cup match was the Edmonton-Calgary game. Next Sunday should be just a formality. But any given Sunday yadda yadda yadda.

My prediction: REDBLACKS start out strong but can only minimally penetrate Edmonton's almost-always-stifling defense, and after an early lead the Eskimos will pour on the coals. Edmonton 36, Ottawa 17

At least 100 people are reported to have died at the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris.
Gunmen took many hostages there before being overpowered when police stormed the building.
Others died in attacks near the Stade de France, with some reports suggesting a suicide blast, and at restaurants.
Paris residents have been asked to stay indoors and military personnel are being deployed across the city.

Update, 11:02pm: Turns out France isn't even closing its borders now! It's putting in tighter border restrictions in the form of checks at the border (ie. sort of a pre-Schengen arrangement) meaning that when psychotic Muslims show up, once they produce the right paperwork they're back in France plotting the murder of French citizens. Of course, because of Schengen there's even going to be the issue of how fast they can do this. They don't have personnel at border crossings, so first they'll have to find and deploy them, and then deal with the unions. The French border with Switzerland will be just as porous as the infamous cheese.

2015-11-08

But in the world of science, the two are reunited. Time-discretized variational formulation of non-smooth frictional contact was a 2001 article in the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering and was authored by Anna Pandolfi and Couro Kane (along with fellow CalTech grad students Jerrold E. Marsden and Michael Ortiz).† The "he said", as so very often happens, looks to be correct. This past week Hayley Pandolfi stopped cooperating with investigators and the prosecutor announced that Kane will never face a Grand Jury because the physical evidence backed his side of the story.